The 80's was a decade in which a lot of comedy classics
were born. Stripes from 1981 was one of these classics. The movie was
the first attempt to poke fun at the military and director Ivan Reitman
created a whole new genre: The military comedy. It was a success in
every way, mainly due to the excellent and cool performance of Bill
Murray. The success of Stripes lead to the creation of many similar
constructed films such as The Police Academy series.

The score:

Both, composer Elmer Bernstein and director Ivan Reitman, have already
had a lot of experience in doing comedies. Bernstein had scored several
comedies, including The Rat Race (1960) and the musical comedy
Thoroughly Modern Millie (which earned him his one and only Oscar
for best score in 1967) before both teamed up for the first time on
Reitman's Animal House (1978). From that film on, they
collaborated on other successful movies such as Stripes. It is
surprising that there was no soundtrack release of any kind at the time
when the film was a successful summer blockbuster. Fans of the movie as
well as Elmer Bernstein fans had to wait 24 years until they would
finally hold a (legit) score release in their hands.

Elmer
Bernstein's music for Stripes is extremely colourful with a lot of ideas
and melodies interwoven. The Heart of the score is the
excellent march. This piece is already introduced in the first track
"Stripes March" which is introducing the military camp in the movie.
Fans of the film will immediately recognize the march as entertaining
and fun with it's catchy melody while fans of the composer will notice
that he was obviously poking fun at his own classic score for The Great
Escape (1963) which featured one of the classic main title marches in
film score history. The other highlight is a piano piece for Bill
Murray's character John Winger, first featured in the track "Winger",
which gets several variations throughout the score in "Depression" and
"Escape". It is a laid back and somehow depressive melody, perfectly
fitting the personality of the character it was composed for. A swinging
and relaxing love theme can be heard in "Cops". Well, I am not sure if
one can call it swinging (it is actually too slow for that) but it has a
pleasant 60's sound to it. Another fun march piece is "Graduation March"
which is actually a source music piece played by the military band
before the hilarious 'boom-shaka-laka' scene begins (if you watch the
scene carefully you will notice a young Bill Paxton playing one of the
soldiers). As the squad is going to Europe where they get captured by
the 'reds', Bernstein is introducing a folk theme for the Russians in
the track "Into the Fire" which sounds extremely clichéd . Rightfully so
because it adds to the fun. The rest of the score is exciting music with
more variations of the march and other themes. A nice medley of all
themes can be heard in "Freeze Frames" which is closing the score
together with "End Credits". As a nice bonus, Varese included the
original trailer music composed by Elmer Bernstein from a time when
trailers were not just scored with repetitive synth library music. The
cue even contains the march and some exciting Bernstein action writing.
The score is a winner on CD because it never becomes boring and
does not suffer from the edits and fade-ins that were made for the
film's final soundtrack. Comedies are considered as the most difficult
genre for a composer to score but talents as Elmer Bernstein never
seemed to have any problems with this. Stripes is one of the best scores
for the genre and thus a classic in its own way.

RATING:

Score as heard in the film:
69%

Score as heard on CD:77%

TOTAL:
73%

The
presentation:

Varese Sarabande made the impossible happen and released
stripes as a legit release. Columbia is the rights owner and they wanted
to release the score to tie in with the DVD release. Usually, they are
more reserved when it comes to score releases so there might be hope. A
bootleg of the score was already floating around which had a terribly
muted sound. However, it is interesting to note that the Varese release
contains all important tracks from the film including cues that had been
left off the bootleg, so if you have the boot there is still a reason
for you to get the official album, not to mention the much better stereo
sound. Ironically, the sound is the only problem because the recording
itself sounds heavily compressed like many other Bernstein scores from
that decade. Varese still did a good job in providing the music with new
vitality without destroying the originality of the recording's sound.
The 6-page-booklet contains detailed liner notes about the story of the
collaboration between Reitman and Bernstein with credits for the
musicians at the end. A very good presentation for a regular release.
Hopefully, Stripes will just be the beginning of a series of score
releases from the Columbia vault.

Presentation by the Label:84%

Summary:

A
must-have for fans of the composer or the film. The Stripes score is one
of those special cult items that you don't want to miss and it is a
great luck that there was enough interest in a release. This really
gives hope for other, much better scores, that are still rotting away in
a vault of a studio. I really hope Stripes will be a success because if
this release is doing well it could show the studio's music executives
that there is a market for this excellent music genre.